Ben Bradlee

Ben Bradlee (26 August 1921-21 October 2014) was the executive editor of The Washington Post from 1968 to 1991. He was best-known for challenging the federal government over the right to publish the Pentagon Papers and for overseeing the publication of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's stories documenting the Watergate scandal.

Biography
Ben Bradlee was born in Boston, Massachusetts on 26 August 1921, and he was commissioned into the US Navy in 1942, just two hours after graduating from Harvard. He fought in the Pacific during World War II, including at Saipan, Tinian, Bougainville, the Solomon Islands, and the Battle of Leyte Gulf. After the war, he started working for the New Hampshire Sunday News, and he started working for The Washington Post as a reporter in 1948. Bradlee worked as a foreign correspondent during the 1950s, during which time he also had links to the CIA. In 1965, he became managing editor at The Post, and he became executive editor in 1968. Bradlee challenged the federal government over the right to publish the Pentagon Papers, and he later oversaw the publication of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's stories documenting the Watergate scandal, forcing President Richard Nixon to resign. Bradlee was awarded the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism in 1998, and he died in 2014.